Welcome to Prepaid Phone News' regular Sunday Prepaid Phones on Sale this Week post listing the best current US prepaid and unlocked phone deals.

This week's Deal of the Week is the AT&T GoPhone ZTE ZMax 2 LTE Android phone which is on sale for $49.99 at Best Buy, online or in-store. Update 10/3: sold out online, very limited availability in stores.

The ZMax 2, which normally sells for between $80 and $100, has exceptionally good specs for a $100 phone, let alone a $50 one. Its best features are 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, both twice what's typically found in sub-$100 phones.

The Zmax 2 can be used as is on AT&T (postpaid or prepaid), Cricket and AT&T MVNOs like Airvoice, H2O, TracFone and Pure TalkUSA. If unlocked, the ZMax 2 also works with FreedomPop GSM, Truphone, T-Mobile and T-Mobile MVNOs. The ZMax 2 supports LTE bands 2, 4, 5 and 12. It also supports quad band GSM and 2100 Mhz HSPA+ for international use.

AT&T will unlock its brand new phones phones for non-customers for free. If you want to unlock the phone, do not turn it on with the AT&T SIM in it as AT&T may refuse the unlock because the phone has been "used" on AT&T. See the Wiki post on this Slickdeals page for step by step unlocking instructions.

Unadvertised in store only specials: Some items have very limited availability, especially with prices ending in .98 which indicates a clearance item. Use Brickseek's Target Inventory Checker to check for price and availability in your area by DPCI number (after price in listings below).

The Best Buy site info for the ZMax 2 shows not available for shipping nor pickup at stores in as far as Florida is concern, unless new stock will be delivered during the week. Anyone else see it available in other parts of the country?

I ordered 4 of the BB ZTE ZMax 2 phones @ $49.99 and 4 Cricket SIM cards @ $1.00 each, to help some neighbors set up a Cricket Group Save account. Great prices, granted, but it has been nothing short of a nightmare getting the phones delivered and two of the four SIM cards have still not arrived. I finally replaced the two cards that never showed up with two bought locally.

The two SIM cards that have arrived did not activate with Cricket Customer Service -- they were never released before shipping out with the store code. During each of many calls we made to BB Customer Service, we were assured that the codes had been cleared and we were "good to go" and could proceed activating them with Cricket.

They never worked, and finally Cricket cut off service to the two ZTE phones (and one BYOD IPhone) that we had managed to activate -- I assume because of our trying to activate the two remaining phones and Best Buy SIM cards too many times and Cricket assuming that we we were trying to activate stolen SIM cards!

All in all, a big mess to save a few bucks, and my neighbors doubting my "savvy" efforts to save them money. In later calls to Cricket CS, they started saying, "Did you get that SIM on sale from Best Buy? Because none of them are activating..."

One BB CS rep after another either ignorant, or promising stuff they couldn't deliver, or, or,or... Over the years I have had one bad experience after another with this company, and I won't be burned again.

P.S. The ZTE ZMax 2 is a great phone, and Cricket remains the best value going, at least here in Alaska.

The Kyocera Hydro Air lacks camera auto-focus, making it difficult to get good pictures or scanning barcodes or using WalMart Savings Catcher to scan receipts, etc. I'd look at the specs before ordering this phone. Good review here:http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Kyocera-Hydro-AIR_id9765

However Verizon phones have limited support for non-Verizon LTE bands. Most don't support b12 and many lack support for b2 and b5. For use on US-GSM networks you are generally better off buying a non-Verizon phone.The GSM support in Verizon phones is mainly there for international roaming support and even there support for non-US LTE bands is largely non-existent.

You need to thoroughly research the purchase of any carrier branded phone for use on a different carrier to avoid disappointment.

The ATT LG Phoenox 2 from Best Buy has very similar specs to the Zemax2 (1.5GRAM/16GB memeory remvable battey and has Android 6.0). However, the battery capacity is less and it has the poorly palced buttons.

Has anyone here returned a prepaid phone to Best Buy since they implemented the $35 cell phone return fee recently? Looking for confirmation on whether the return fee applies to prepaid cell phones or not.

"You can return or exchange cell phones with a carrier contract and unlocked phones within 14 days. Like the carrier stores, we have a charge ($35) for return or exchange of these products. This return period and charge also applies if you are a My Best Buy Elite or Elite Plus member."